An Important Day In The Life of Robert F. Kennedy

In 1964 Lyndon Johnson enacted his war on poverty. Three years later Robert Kennedy knelt in a crumbling shack in Mississippi, watching a toddler pick rice and beans off of a dirt floor. What Robert Kennedy saw on that trip would impact him personally and in part, drive is run for the Presidency one year later.

While Vietnam was the seminal issue of the day, poverty and its nexus with the civil rights movement, were very much on Kennedy’s mind.

Ellen Meacham takes us back to this transformative moment for RFK in Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Ellen Meacham: 

Hillbilly Elegy

Amidst all the talk of the things that divide america, Race and Class always rise to the top. Over the years there have been many efforts to understand the social, cultural historical and policy underpinning of both of these divisions. And sometimes even efforts for solutions.

Add to this list of efforts the work of J.D. Vance in his captivating work Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Vance takes us deeply, from his own profound experience, into the heart of poor and rural America to try and help us understand the the resentment, intergenerational poverty and loss of hope that seems to be driving 45% of our country today.

My conversation with J.D. Vance:

The Lives and Faces of the World's Poor

Living in the West, it's easy to forget that one-sixth of the world's population subsists without sustainable sources of food, medical care, or housing.

More than a billion people around the world are believed to live on a dollar a day... or less. While the circumstances leading to that sort of poverty are varied and complicated, the situations faced by the planet's poorest are depressingly familiar.

Now we get an on the ground look at that world, in a new work by Thomas A. Nazario. He is the founder of a nonprofit called The Forgotten International, and the author of the vividly reported and beautifully photographed, Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World's Poor.

My conversation with Thomas Nazario:

Do we need a new war on poverty?

It’s been almost 50 years since Lyndon Johnson declared "war on poverty."  It’s been more than 50 years since JFK was moved by the poverty of Appalachia and Bobby Kennedy by the poverty of the South Bronx.

Today's poverty may not be as dark or desperate, but it is more insidious. While we focus on the growing gap between the one percent and the middle class, we often ignore those that have fallen out of the middle class, and sunk below the poverty level. That group is growing exponentially and it’s a blight on our nation. Certainly it’s not a part of the American exceptionalism the President spoke of last week.

Just as the House is voting to drastically cut Food Stamps, journalist Sasha Abramsky delves deep into the issues in The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives.

My conversation with Sasha Abramsky:

Poverty and the brain

Growing up poor isn't merely hard on kids. It might also be bad for their brains. A long-term study of cognitive development in lower- and middle-class students found strong links between childhood poverty, physiological stress and adult memory. A fascinating article in WIRED. 

Money quote:

The income-achievement gap is a formidable societal problem, but little is known about either neurocognitive or biological mechanisms that might account for income-related deficits in academic achievement. We show that childhood poverty is inversely related to working memory in young adults. Furthermore, this prospective relationship is mediated by elevated chronic stress during childhood.